After moving to New York in 2009, Eric Helvie began working as a painting assistant to contemporary artist, Rudolf Stingel. During his six year assistantship, Helvie maintained his own studio practice. In 2009 he was given his first New York solo exhibition at the home of art collectors, Maxine and Andrew Koven. In 2012 he was included in a group exhibition at Marianne Boesky Gallery and in 2015, Helvie mounted two consecutive solo sows at Natalie Kates Projects and Rivington Design House, respectively.

Helvie's work deals directly with the act of seeing, obsessive looking and optical ambiguity. Pulling from art history, television and film, his paintings act as props and icons: objects that glean meaning from their context and point to a larger system of understanding. A writer turned painter, Helvie finds his storytelling references in ancient myths and fables to depict his sea monsters in the abstract and counters with his signature photo-realism in iconic battleships at war. The resulting contest between the two side-by-side images is startling - both old and new.